How to Keep Your Car Clean: Tips for Parents of Young Kids

Keeping your car clean when you have kids could be a challenge. You may be the kind of person who always keeps everything in decent condition.

After having kids, though, your car’s floor might be covered with cookie crumbs and broken crayons every day! Though you clean it regularly, it ends up messy again.

Here are some tips on how to keep your car clean!

Avoid food in the car

Snacking in the car is the things that parents always do when they missed breakfast or lunch, as well as to keep their children entertained during their trips in the car. However, if you want to keep your car tidy, avoid eating in the car except for emergencies or long trips.

During your long trips, you may want to prepare some snacks for your kids, consider to eat them only when you get out of the car.

Provide trash bag in your car

Get in the habit of having some bag for the trash; you can be creative and use some random wrappers or reuse your grocery bags. Teach your kid to do so. Also, don’t forget to toss the trash bag if you get out of the car so to avoid the trash to be accumulated. You can even get a professional trash bag for cars from the store if you want a fancier look.

Keep toys to a minimum

Toys are necessary to keep your kids entertained during their trips in the car. Toys could clutter your vehicle in a heartbeat, especially if your children treat your car as their entertainment hub.

You may want to keep toys to a minimum and instead try to initiate conversation or sightseeing as alternate activities. Another reason why you need to eliminate toys inside the car because they can be dangerous projectiles if there is a sudden stop or car crash.

Cover your car seats

Covering your car seat’s surfaces is a smart move to protect them from your kid’s muddy shoes and footprints. In particular, when your kid reaches a certain age, they will become active, and you can’t help but let them get in the car with their dirty shoes. You can train them not to do so. However, you also can initiate to protect your car seat by using old t-shirts or a proper car seat covers.

Use mats to protect your carpets

Besides covering your car seats, you can also protect your car’s floor by using cheap rubber mats, or turning your car mats upside down because some carpets have a rubber backing. Or you can also use a cheap plastic carpet liner to keep it clean.

Organize your car

It is a good idea to have a seat organizer to help in keeping your children’s toys, art supplies and other stuff in their rightful place. You can also use storage containers or bags and separate the stuff, for example, use the smaller one for snacks, while using the other one for diapers, art books, etc.

Wipe your car during downtime

Regular cleaning intervals will help to reduce the need for a major clean up for your car. Wipe-up your car while you are waiting for your kids in the school or while you are waiting for them at the park playing. Give your car a quick clean up using wet wipes.

Use an air freshener

Apply an odor-eliminating or spray some air fresheners will also help to reduce to smell of your children’s sports equipment or any other kinds of stuff for their active daily activities.

While it is a bit unrealistic to keep your car to be a spotless clean all the time, you can still keep it looks decent by taking some proactive steps. As parents, you should enjoy this time in your child’s life. They will grow up quickly and before long, they will start driving, too.

For now, they’re dependent on you on many different aspects of their lives. But that shouldn’t mean that you can let the car stay dirty.